KELLY COULDN'T HAVE DIED FROM
WOUND

09:00 - 14 February
2004

The German word for
suicide is more direct than the English: Selbstmord - self-murder. Did Dr
David Kelly - husband, father of three daughters and a leading world
expert in chemical and germ warfare - murder himself, or was he murdered
by others?

When his violent death was first reported I felt he was
probably a victim of a wicked system that had used him and spat him out. I
was very sceptical that he could have bled to death from one cut
wrist.

At first, the media spoke of "alleged suicide", but by last
November I became aware that reporters were speaking of Dr Kelly's
"suicide" without qualification. Objecting to this, on December 15 I wrote
a letter to the Morning Star - key extracts follow:

"I write to
enquire as to the status of the Coroner's inquest into the death of Dr
David Kelly. I hope that it has not been subsumed within the Hutton
inquiry.

"He had been put through the psychological mincing
machine??? and it is easy to imagine his sense of failure as well as
betrayal in both directions. We have been told that he died from a cut
wrist and that he had non-lethal levels of an analgesic in his
blood.

"As a past trauma and orthopaedic surgeon I cannot easily
accept that even the deepest cut into one wrist would cause such
exsanguination that death resulted. The two arteries are of matchstick
size and would have quickly shut down and clotted. Furthermore we have a
man who was expert in lethal substances and who apparently chose a most
uncertain method of suicide."

I then joined a group of two doctors
and two lay people who had studied Dr Kelly's death from the start. One
doctor is a retired anaesthesiologist of some academic distinction - Dr
Searle Sennett FFARCS; the other, Dr Stephen Frost MB ChB BSc, is a
diagnostic radiologist. Rowena Thursby has acted as writer, editor and
liaison officer and Garrett Cooke is a computer consultant. None of us has
met, but we have spoken on the phone and exchanged dozens of e-mails. All
letters/publications have been the result of meticulous study. Martin
Birnstingl MS FRCS, retired vascular surgeon, Dr Andrew Rouse, consultant
in public health, and Dr Peter Fletcher, pathologist, recently joined
us.

The group has most recently expressed its doubt about Dr
Kelly's "suicide" in the Guardian. Other articles appeared last month in
the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. On January 21
we sent an 11-page letter to coroner Nicholas Gardiner. Here we set out
the medical/scientific reasons why we could not accept a suicide verdict
without a proper inquest, where witnesses can be subpoenaed and evidence
given on oath before a jury.

Our main point was that the clean
division of one small artery in this man's left wrist (the ulnar artery)
could not have caused such bleeding that death resulted. An adult needs to
lose about five pints of blood to die. This little artery would have drawn
back from the wound, constricted and then clotted off. To lose even a pint
of blood in this way would have been unlikely. Very disturbing
inconsistencies in the evidence regarding how the corpse was positioned
and who was present at the death scene were also highlighted for the
coroner in our letter.

Lord Hutton reported two weeks ago and his
verdict was (predictably, in view of the unchallenged pathology and
toxicology reports) - suicide. His reasoning:

1. Bleeding from
multiple small cuts or scratches to the left wrist. To this I say that the
multiplicity has no bearing; only one small artery was divided.

2.
Overdose of co-proxamol. But I note that the toxicologist found that the
levels of paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene were a third or less than the
levels he knew to be toxic.

3. "Silent coronary disease". However,
Dr Kelly is bound to have had such disease, in common with all men of the
same age. No evidence was produced by the pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt,
that he had suffered a "coronary". Lord Hutton might as well have included
the presence of the common cold and an ingrowing toenail as further
contributors to death.

Dr David Kelly was treated shamefully by
some of those in or on the fringes of government. The least that should
happen for this man and his family is for the inquest to be reopened, a
jury called, and the most rigorous cross-examination then to be carried
out.